Portuguese Conquest and Commerce in Southern Asia

The Carreira da India - the Portuguese sea route to India and back - formed the subject of Professor Boxer's earlier collection, From Lisbon to Goa, and the present one looks at their expansion in the Indian Ocean itself and eastwards to the South China Sea. Alongside studies on the archival material and contemporary historians of the period, are others in which he traces the fate of Portuguese attempts to extend their control and influence over the indigenous states of the region, and shows how they strove to establish and maintain their dominance over the trade routes connecting Europe, the Middle East, India and Indo-China in the face of constant competition from others. This came not only from rival colonial powers, principally the English and Dutch, but from local ones such as the Achineses of Sumatra. Sevaral articles also deal with the Spanish with whom, for a time, the Portuguese were uneasily united.